The conventional process used to build and install a dock is typically as follows. The first step is to establish the center of the walkway at the edge of the shore. The second step is to establish the center of the walkway at the rivers edge. Generally, this is accomplished by placing a pipe or stake at the river's edge that will be visible from the shore. Then, construction of the batter boards is performed (batter boards are a temporary bench, constructed to define the width of the walkway pilings) at both the shore's edge and at a point approximately one hundred feet from shore. Two strings of equal length are stretched on each side of the batter boards to ensure that the batter boards are positioned parallel to one another. Next, a mark is made on each string at eight feet, ten feet, or twelve feet depending on the choice of piling distance. This is typically done with a magic marker. Two pilings are then carried out to the first marked point nearest the shore and place in the ground. Generally, this is either done by digging a posthole where the ground is solid or jetting the pilings down and driving them into place with a heavy hammer. All subsequent pairs of pilings are progressively placed in a similar manner at the predetermined spacing until the one hundred foot length is attained.
After all the pilings have been installed, walkways are built over non-navigable marshes and mud flats until the walkways reach the navigable waters edge. Water is an inevitable nuisance when constructing the walkways during time periods from middle to high tide. Even so, for longer walkways, it is customary to transport pilings while the water is at a higher level so that they can be tethered with a stake in the mud where the interval marks were previously made on the strings. Alternatively, when the tide is out, dock builders will simply walk to the predetermined interval marks and erect the pilings accordingly. Once all the pilings are set, a board, also known as a bench, is nailed to each pair of pilings.
After about a 100 feet of pilings are in place, scaffold boards are erected on top of the benches. Once this phase of the construction and installation process is completed, the dock builders can walk from one set of pilings to the other without getting in the water or mud. The dock builders can easily walk the scaffold boards to jet the pilings deeper, if needed, or hammer them into place. The pilings, however, are usually not plumbed at this time. Normally, the pilings are plumbed later via a come-a-long or winch and then set by nailing permanent cross braces in place. To complete the process of setting 100 feet of pilings, it can take up to two days for a team of four experienced dock builders.
The next step in the traditional process of dock building requires that permanent cross benches be installed with the use of a transit to insure level placement. Three floor joists (normally 2×8) can then be installed on top of the benches. After that, 1×6 decking is temporarily laid on top of the joists. The top of the pilings usually rise above the 2×8 floor joists and, therefore, are cut below the top joist at this time. Often, a string is extended from the edge of the previously built deck (or the batter board if the overall length is less than 100 feet), to facilitate the installation of the deck boards in a perfectly straight line. This phase of the process to install the joists and decking routinely takes a team of four dock builders a day to complete.
On average, a 100-foot walkway takes four days to build from start to finish. For docks extending over 250 feet, the timing of the tide and cold weather conditions can further slow the construction to five or six days per 100 feet. Further, due to the repeated back and forth traffic of the dock builders, it can be expected that this traditional, inefficient method of construction and installation will result in the destruction of the delicate, and often legally protected, marsh environment on either side of the walkway. It is not uncommon for the environment to take between five and ten years to recuperate from the damage.
Thus, a need exists for a method and system for the constructing and installing docks that avoid, or at least minimize, potential damage to the environmentally delicate marsh and shore. A need also exists for a method and system that make dock and walkway construction more efficient in terms of time, labor, and costs.